Guide on How to Play Untranslated Visual Novels in English

I guess this is not really a guide, since I didn’t come up with this myself, but for all the people that don’t know about this yet, let me just lead you to the right places to find what you are looking for.

So I assume that I’m not the only person that can’t speak/understand Japanese but is highly interested in some visual novels that are, unfortunately, still untranslated. As a yuri fan, you can consider yourself lucky enough, since we get a full series of pure yuri sexiness, Sono Hanabira, translated into English.

Fortunately, these are not the only yuri titles out there, but most of them are still untranslated, and I’m pretty sure many of them will never get a translation at all. So if you either don’t want to wait for a translation or if you simply want to read a visual novel that so far didn’t get a translation, rest assured, there is a solution to your problem. What you need are only a few programs, and, of course, the visual novel that you want to play.

Before you skip the rest and hurry to the website below, let me inform you that this is not really a good alternative to an actual translation. You will have to read between the lines a lot to be able to understand what’s going on. Even though the translator is good, it’s far from being perfect. In my case, not even once did I think I got a translation that sounded like a perfect English sentence. It’s more like, you get all the words translated, but their order is mixed up. I’ll show you what I mean with this below. So in conclusion, I think these tools do work, but you really have to read between the lines almost all the time to get the meaning of the translation.

Already having some knowledge of the Japanese language will definitely come in handy, and I would even go as far as to claim that reading a visual novel with the help of these tools will help you learn the language as well.

You will need the following programs:

Atlas v14
Agth
ITH
Translation aggregator

Clicking here will redirect you to a website on which you can download all the above mentioned programs and find the instructions on how to install them and run them properly. It looks confusing at first, but don’t worry. Even I got it to work, and I’m a disaster waiting to happen when it comes to stuff like this.

When you are done with everything, it should look a little like this:

So I tried using this with the eleventh Sono Hanabira game, since I just can’t wait for the release of a translation. I already played a few scenes of the game, and I mostly understood what was going on as well.

Some suggestions: There are many untranslated yuri visual novels, so let me just name a few interesting looking ones to you.

I’m not sure about Akai Ito. I thought Wings of Yuri translated this one, but I can’t find it anymore. And yeah, I know that there are more, but I guess those are the most popular ones.

Sono Hanabira 9 and 10, Limit Panic!, Sapphism, White Robe Love Addiction, and Okujou no Yurirei-san are titles that are in the progress of getting translated. To see their translation status, check YuriProject.

I have a feeling that I shouldn't leave too many download links here. so I got the link for you, write me an email, so I have your address and I'll send you the link.You'll find my mail-address in the “For all kinds of questions” box on the right side of this blog.

Excuse me, how to change the raw words (which the words are still in square shape) into Japanese? I already installed the translation progams and ran it but it didn't work. I think it was because the words weren't in Japanese, so could you help me out?

If I understand that correctly, then you're not playing a Japanese Visual Novel but something in another language that you want to translate back into Japanese?Because in this case I don't think the translation programs will really work, since that is just a Japanese translator.

I'm sorry but I can't really help you with this. I've heard that there is a similar program that translates the Japanese text into Chinese, but I have no idea how it's called or whether it works with these tools as well.

Uhm I know this comment is sudden in a rather old post, but may I ask. When you played Hanabira 11 with the translator tools was it quite understandable? 'Cause just like you I can't really wait much more longer for the English translation of it and I really want to play it, like right now. I don't even think its patch's going to be released soon so I decided to just “the heck with it, I'mma play this the hard way” so yeah.

Just asking to assure myself, expectations are a pain in the ass somtimes y'know? Haha. Thanks for this too by the way!

Hm to be honest, playing it this way, was a pain in the ass sometimes. It rarely gives you a perfect English sentence and rather mixes all the words in the sentence and places them in the wrong order, so it's mostly a little harder to reconstruct the actual sentence.

Also, a little Japanese knowledge might come in handy, since especially some Japanese slangwords might not be translated correctly.If I remember correctly, it always translated someone sighing into “boobs” which was very weird 😛

I might have made it sound a little harder than it actually is, but if you have already played other SonoHana games, you might understand a few things already. Still, special moments like their first kiss might be ruined with this translation.

It's revealed on the petal garden website. It'll feature Miya and risa when they first met. I'm looking forward to it, but of course I'll have to deal with the Japanese. I think it'll be on iTunes. They did say it'll be downloadable on androids